Artists explore immigration in Santa Ana

Two artists who have focused on capturing the experiences of people crossing and living along the Tijuana border are now exploring Santa Ana, documenting how immigrant families establish themselves in a community filled with tensions over gentrification.

Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz of the Cognate Collective – a binational arts group – are in-house residents at the Grand Central Art Center where their “Something to do with crossing …” installations will be displayed through July 14.

There, they showcase their “Borderblaster” – a mobile listening station equipped with an FM transmitter that spews out voices of Fourth Street vendors speaking of their changing community along with a collage of historical Santa Ana photos.

The artists' three-month residencies were recently extended to a full year, giving Diaz and Sanchez more time to document oral histories of downtown merchants and develop art education initiatives with different communities.

Before the artists were invited to display their work, they had never stepped foot in Santa Ana. Once they walked along Fourth Street, passing the rows of quinceañera shops, they felt a rush of excitement.

“I feel when I walk down Fourth Street, I have a different pace. It's not like walking anywhere else,” said Diaz, 25.

Being in Santa Ana, he added, “allows us this opportunity to kind of see what happens when you actually cross and when you head to a community and then you live there for decades and you have children who live there and the type of changes that happen once you're here.”

Sanchez and Diaz met as students at UCLA. Sanchez grew up on the Calexico/Mexicali border, while Diaz grew up in the Tijuana/San Diego border region. Their upbringing gave them a more nuanced vision of what the border represents, they said – the long lines of people and cars from the point of crossing into Mexico, the informal vendors selling ice cream and sodas, and the street performers providing entertainment.

Their Grand Central exhibit contains a clothesline installation, which portrays the once steady flow of movement across the border and the transformation people make when crossing it. Sanchez's family often told stories of people exchanging their tattered wardrobe after crossing the border for the clothes hanging in yards to appear inconspicuous.

In Santa Ana, the artists have approached activists, residents and merchants along Fourth Street, asking them: How did you come to Santa Ana? Have you experienced a transformation? What is the nature of the transformation of the city as you see it?

“Everyone that we've spoken to cares deeply,” Diaz said. “There's a very strong connection with the city and what the city can be. I think it's also a community contending with historical injustices.”

Along the way, the artists said they found a lack of documentation of the histories of Fourth Street vendors and hope to donate their work to the Santa Ana Public Library. They also discovered that many feel a disconnect between the community and city government. Earlier, the duo had worked on a Tijuana-San Ysidro border project.

“It's also interesting to come here (Santa Ana) and think about redevelopment in sort of a different way because when we came here, we realized some of the arts organizations and the Artists Village in many ways, I think, were seen as the culprit for a lot of the gentrifying,” said Sanchez, 24.

In their interviews with residents, the artists discovered that many wanted to participate in the art community, but language was a barrier.

In response, the artists coordinated with art spaces downtown and held a bilingual community art walk on June 22. Leading up to the event, Sanchez and Diaz walked their “Borderblaster” sculpture downtown as they passed out fliers, inviting folks to the gathering.

“We find ourselves in a unique position where we're strangely neutral,” Sanchez said. “It's also been interesting from an outsider's perspective and as young Latinos who can identify with these traditions … also see the other side of this argument.

“We can somehow help restart a conversation about redevelopment and restart a conversation about what it is together that we want to make of this downtown community,” Sanchez said.

Cognate Collective will host a walk and listening party about the past, present and future of Santa Ana at 6 p.m. Saturday beginning at 125 N. Broadway.

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